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Vol. 18, No. 6, August 8, 2005

IN THIS ISSUE:

This Reveille Home Page | Friday Program: Grace Happens | Friday Potpourri | Sergeant At Arms Corner | SeaFair New Member Mixer | Web Fun

Grace Happens

Jenny Andrews introduced Reverend David Tinney, Pastor of the Aldergate United Methodist Church. In 2002, David and his daughter had decided that they would participate in the Seattle-to-Portland bicycle ride, something that David’s daughter could fondly remember them doing together in years to come. As he was practicing for the STP and traveling downhill at about 30 mph on Newport Way, teenagers riding in a car pulled up next to him and deliberately pushed him off of his bike. The impact left him paralyzed on the asphalt with a broken shoulder, shattered elbow, broken ribs, a punctured lung and brain damage. With the help of a passing realtor, the teenagers were apprehended. An off-duty policeman happened upon the scene and, with his help, David got to the hospital and started a long journey of physical rehabilitation.

One of David’s surgeons, who was about to start working on his punctured lung, told him that it would be a very delicate operation and that he should prepare himself, mentally, for it. At the time, David was feeling very angry toward the teenagers who had caused him such serious injury, but he decided to let that anger go to help himself, mentally, through the operation. Leading a prayer from the pre-op gurney, he asked for forgiveness for the teenagers right now.

Word of his injuries and his story of forgiveness quickly got around the hospital and, after a Seattle Times article some time later and many follow-up phone calls, it became clear that this event, as bad as it was, was a significant turning point in his life, and it changed the direction of his ministry.

David has counseled many people on the healing and recuperative powers of forgiveness — people who have endured much more terrible things than his ordeal. One was an individual whose daughter’s best friend’s father raped her daughter. One was a whole town in Nebraska who flew David to their town after a nurse had deliberately tainted needles used in a vaccination process to infect 85 people in the town with Hepatitis C.

As David moved into a different ministry, he began researching and reading about healing and concluded that it was definitely a process that could involve as few as three steps and as many as 13 steps. David developed his own process, which he calls “The Five S’s of Forgivenesssss.”

START. This means a deliberate intentional decision to develop a plan for forgiveness. It is the critical starting point.

STOP. Stop means to stop any attempt to retaliate or get even. This means no blame and no determinations of who is right or wrong, and no re-visiting the scene of the crime.

SEPARATE. This one is tricky but requires separating the action from the actor. This is related to the next bullet point.

SEEK. This means an effort to identify with the wrongdoer. All of us have done things in our lives that we are not proud of and regret. The idea is to seek and find some worth in the wrongdoer.

SURRENDER. This means to surrender the outcome to a higher power. By doing so, you will relieve the need to retaliate. Through this, it is possible that “grace happens.”

David passed out a card with his plan on it, which is reproduced below, if you care to cut it out and carry it with you.

Click on card above to open in new window for printing.

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